BACBI: Politics...

TYou sit around for ages, the old joke goes, waiting for a bus, and then three come along at the same time. Something like this seems to be happening right now on the internal Palestinian political front. Until June, Palestinian politics seemed deadlocked, with no prospect of unity, no progress with Israel and no hope for Gaza.

The West Bank leadership is not dissolving the Palestinian Authority (PA) but rather transforming it from an administrative and municipal authority to a resistance authority, a Fatah official said recently. Mohammad Shtayyeh, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee, told Al-Quds newspaper the PA will begin focusing on issues such as boycotting Israel and obstructing settlement construction.

In a way, the Palestinian-Israeli minority is our last chance. Whether we envision a one- or two-state solution in Israel, there is an enormous untapped potential in this political and social minority. It we are to end the settler-colonial mentality, and move towards a post-Zionist reality in historic Palestine, the Palestinian citizens of Israel might be our last chance and our best shot.

We’ve several times mentioned Hanan Ashrawi’s lacerating speech on the cruel delusions of the peace process at the Israel lobby conference in March. Now the conference sponsors, Institute for Research: Middle East Policy and the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, have published a transcript of the speech.

Ilan PAPPÉ: "No, Israel Is Not a Democracy” (Jacobin, May 5, 2017, From Ten Myths About Israel, out now from Verso Books): click here!

Israel is not the only democracy in the Middle East. In fact, it's not a democracy at all.

Roland NIKLES: "Israeli Jews maintain the occupation because it is in their interest — Noam Sheizaf” (Mondoweiss, April 5, 2017): click here!

Noam Sheizaf, speaking at the Kehilla Community Synagogue of the East Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area last Friday, made the point that Israel will not change its occupation without outside help. And the most obvious outside “help” to be had is the United States stopping to run interference for Israel at the UN, says Sheizaf. Are you listening Nikki Haley?

Hamas soon expected to approve document summarizing the organization’s political and strategic positions, including declaring its independence from any outside party such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jonathan OFIR: "A Palestinian state has always been a fiction for Zionists” (Mondoweiss, March 5, 2017): click here!

From the Israeli leadership perspective, a Palestinian state in any true capacity has always been a ‘Never-Never Land’ that should remain in the realms of fiction. When Israel and the Palestinians embarked upon the famous ‘peace process’ in Madrid in 1991, Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir coined the ‘teaspoon policy’: endless negotiating sessions at which countless teaspoons amounting to mountains of sugar would be stirred into oceans of tea and coffee, but no agreement would ever be reached.

Jonathan COOK: "Trump has reminded Palestinians that it was always about one state” (Redress Information and Analysis, Feb 23, 2017): click here!

For more than 15 years, the Middle East “peace process” initiated by the Oslo accords has been on life support. Last week, United States President Donald Trump pulled the plug, whether he understood it or not.

Israeli opposition leader's plan: Sides will agree on decade of calm, during which time West Bank will be a violence and incitement-free zone; settlement construction outside blocs will be frozen, with more powers to Palestinians – only then negotiations.

Nadia HIJAB: "Palestinians must hang on to the green line, whether the aim is two states or one” (The Guardian, Feb 22, 2017): click here!

The 1949 armistice border underpins the international community’s refusal to legalise Israel’s occupation. We must hold any changes to it accountable.

You could almost hear the collective gasp in the echo-chamber of Washington-based Middle East policy circles when President Donald Trump made comments backing away from the “two-state solution,” which has been a centerpiece of peace policy for the last 15 years.

Max FISCHER: "The Two-State Solution: What It Is and Why It Hasn’t Happened” (The New York Times, Jan 29, 2017): click here!

Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday joined a growing chorus warning that the so-called two-state solution, which he called “the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians,” could be on the verge of permanent collapse.

The Middle East peace conference which took place in Paris on 15 January was the usual farce, with Israel and Palestine, the subjects under discussion, both staying away. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the talks “useless” and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas was off opening an embassy in Vatican City...

The United Nations Security Council recently passed Resolution 2334, which condemns the construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, declares them again to be illegal, and demands a stop to any future such construction. Israel, as expected, has denounced this resolution.

DIn an interview, Jamil Mezher, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's' political bureau, told Al-Monitor that the division between Fatah and Hamas is preventing the renewal of the political system in Palestine.

Nadia HIJAB: "This is the one good thing about Obama's legacy in Israel – and John Kerry might be about to destroy it" (Independent, Jan 14, 2017): click here!

Stating that Israel must be a 'Jewish state' in which the 1.7m Palestinian citizens of Israel 'live as equal citizens' is not grounded in reality: there are already over 50 laws that discriminate against them, and Kerry’s principles do nothing to address these.

Fadi al-Qanbar knew all the consequences of his actions - he'd seen it many times before - but the Palestinians see Israeli retaliations as a natural part of the general policy toward them, not as a response.

In his recent speech titled ‘Remarks on Middle East Peace’, US Secretary of State John Kerry offered a wide historical symmetric trajectory including “milestones” which Kerry believes “illustrate the two sides of the conflict and form the basis for its resolution.”

Jeff HALPER: "A bi-national, democratic state is the only option Israel and Kerry has left us with" (Mondoweiss, Dec 29, 2016): click here!

﻿“Bad Faith and Futile Conflict Management” — that’s the headline I would give to the extraordinary events of the past couple days: the vote in the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlement; Kerry’s speech tonight on the necessity of saving the two-state solution; and Netanyahu’s reaction to both.

﻿ The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed a resolution 14-0 condemning all Israeli settlements on Palestinian land as having “no legal validity” and amounting to “a flagrant violation under international law.”

Nothing could have been more calculated to ruin Hanukka for the Israeli High Command and bring Christmas cheer to the Palestinian Christians and Muslims they have abused and terrorised for decades. Yes, the United Nations Security Council finally had the balls to adopt a resolution condemning Israeli “settlements” (posh word for illegal squats) on stolen Palestinian lands.

Mya GUARNIERI: "Palestinian right to fight occupation not only moral, but legal as well" (+972, Dec 22, 2016): click here!

I agree wholeheartedly with Noam Sheizaf’s recent post about the Palestinians’ moral right to resist. But I would like to add that the moral right to resist is also the foundation of the Palestinians’ legal right to resist the illegal Israeli occupation. Considered within that framework, Israel’s suppression of Palestinian protest and resistance becomes even more striking and perverse.

The vote on the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, has reportedly been postponed. This came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put pressure on Egypt, the resolution’s sponsor.

The potential of Palestinian democracy has been greatly weakened by Israel and its military occupation, Palestinian actors such as Fatah and Hamas, and key members of the donor community. Such a situation sustains the dysfunctional nature of the Palestinian political system and the unelected, unrepresentative status of the political actors who dominate the lives of the Palestinian people.

Neither criticism by UN Middle East envoy Nikolay Mladenov over settlement expansion nor a ruling by Israel's own Supreme Court against the construction of illegal outposts have ruffled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's insistence on portraying Israel as the victim of international persecution.

The demand for recognition of the Jewish state, which Ari Shavit says he is complicit in, seeks to camouflage the fact that the only people whose right to exist is really denied is the Palestinian people.

Gideon LEVY: "Stop With the Nonsense That Palestinians Are a Minority in Israel" (Haaretz, Aug 25, 2016): click here!

You can’t argue that the Palestinians aren’t an integral part of greater Israel; occupied and dispossessed, but integral.

On June 11, 2009, I published a piece here in which I suggested a formula: A demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish State of Israel. Three days later it was the thrust of Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech.

Palestinians believe that calling for a binational state will force the international community to engage in a realistic two-state solution in 2017 and force the Israeli public to see the necessity of Palestinian statehood.

It is time for the citizens of the world to effect the paradigm shift required to bring about a peaceful resolution to the world’s most infamous conflict.

Alaa TARTIR: "The Middle East Quartet: A dishonest broker in denial of the facts" (Middle East Eye, July 8, 2016): click here!

The Quartet needs to talk to Hamas. Instead the pro-Israel bias in its latest report could give Israel the excuse it needs to attack Gaza again.

"The Nakba and the Holocaust: A Conversation with Bashir Bashir" (The Nakba Files, June 27, 2016): click here!

How can one think productively about the Holocaust and the Nakba together? Political theorist Bashir Bashir argues that confronting this question is necessary in order to develop a new approach to decolonization in Israel/Palestine.

Below is a breakdown of the different instruments by which Israel has applied parts of its domestic legal system to the territories occupied in 1967, with the ultimate effect of entrenching the settlements and creating a segregated regime of unequal laws for Palestinians and Israelis.

Last week, the Knesset Finance Committee approved amendments to Israel’s 1959 Law for the Encouragement of Capital Investment that would extend tax benefits granted to certain businesses inside the Green Line to their counterparts in the settlements. Opposition lawmakers have criticized the proposal as a form of “creeping annexation.”

The Nakba dispossesses Palestinians: not only of land and territory, but also at the level of political discourse. Since the establishment of the state of Israel, the country’s judiciary has worked to constrict the space for Palestinian political activity – both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary – through various methods.

Now that some of the euphoria has lifted, it is possible to re-examine the Israeli-PLO agreement with the required common sense. What emerges from such scrutiny is a deal that is more flawed and, for most of the Palestinian people, more unfavourably weighted than many had first supposed.

Gideon LEVY: "So These Are Israel's New Heroes?"Israel's recent military operations in Palestinian hospitals are a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, and make you wonder how low the country can sink (Haaretz, Nov 21, 2015).

Noam SHEIZAF: "Jerusalem, in context"(+972, October 19, 2015). "The current events in Jerusalem have a political history and context. Attempts to attribute the violence to some kind of Palestinian pathology while ignoring other factors is a recipe for making things worse."